Rod Emmerson

Born 1955

Rockhampton’s popular cartoonist

This [cartooning] is about my
30th job. My main aim was to be
a professional musician. I was a
roadie.. did sound work for
Festival Hall, Brisbane; worked
for Billy Joel, Roberta Flack, the Ritchie
family. What really straightened me out was a job as a
surveyor’s assistant - a chainman - as I spent lots of times in the
bush with professional people who had a really balanced outlook
and great understanding of our country. Excellent bush skills
that taught me, bashing my way through heavy scrubland. Then
I rolled into survey draughting. I came here to Rocky to a survey
practice for 3 years, then 5 years ago the Morning Bulletin,
Rockhampton offered me a full-time post as resident cartoonist.
First time, I knocked it back ‘cause I had a nice safe job.

What motivates me each day is my readership. For every
paper that’s sold, at least 3 others will read it. A circulation of
30,000, so when you add that up with the Sunshine Coast and
Gladstone regional papers, it’s a lot of people. They want their
local, state and national news all in one paper. I try to target not
only the family but also the priests and pros. It’s a difficult
market place so you have to set your sights for the cartoon
somewhere in-between. I know what people who read the
cartoon think, from feedback and from living in the area; what
they’ll tolerate. Most regional people these days are fairly well
educated so the cartoon can be fairly intellectual.

I’ve only been cartooning a fairly short period but I’ve been
fortunate to have been used by the Bulletin, the Australian,
Newsweek and various current affairs programmes as a
representative of the cartoon world. I find that staggers me,
to be picked out from about 35 major editorial cartoonists
in the country

I like kids and I think they have a marvellous imagination but
you can see they are being spoiled by computers and generating
blood and guts and ‘cowabunga’. In my day I was quite content
drawing Batman and ‘55 Chevvies but these days there’s far too
much violence and it affects their thinking and judgement on
things like the value of life. They will quite easily in their
sketches terminate a human life. That low value for human life
at an early age... I try to dispense with all that shit and get
them to look at life itself... turning inert objects into live things.

I have a great love of the way of life in Queensland. I have
tropical blood flowing through my veins. I think Queenslanders
have their own perspective of life and how to enjoy themselves
and the best asset Queensland has is its people.

Rod Emmerson is the president of the Queensland branch of
the Black & White Artists Club of Austalia.

Mick Joffe

’93

More Characters

Since the early 1970s, Mick Joffe's passion has been to caricature and record endangered characters of Australia, and the world.
As of 2015, the majority of these interviews exist only in manuscript form.